


Not Thinking

by sudapigrafool



Category: 30 Seconds to Mars
Genre: Alcohol, M/M, Mpreg, performance enhancing drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:38:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1428859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sudapigrafool/pseuds/sudapigrafool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Authorship: Polydeuces<br/>Summary: Trying to gain weight for "Chapter 27," Jared resorts to taking a hormone cocktail devised by one of Hollywood's Dr. Feelgoods. Some of his white blood cells get very, very confused. (orig., end of 2005)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Thinking

Don’t misunderstand me. This isn’t what I do. This was not the sort of thing I would normally do, but, um… it had been such a long fucking tour, you know? Extenuating circumstances.

Which probably, possibly, explains how I came to make one of the less well-considered decision of my life. I mean, there I was, sometimes I couldn’t even sleep. Then, other times I‘d be so fucking tired I couldn’t even think. I guess I wasn’t thinking when I did it, because then I _really_ couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t hardly sit still.

Back in the fall, in the middle of touring with my band, I’d contracted to play Mark Chapman in a small independent film. Incase you don’t recall, Chapman’s the guy who shot John Lennon. Yeah, him, what was I thinking? Filming was set to start right after the beginning of the new year while we were taking a break from touring, and I had agreed to gain weight for the part. Thirty pounds, or so.

It was impossible. I’m basically a vegetarian, which makes it tough to gain in the first place, and for every pound I’d managed to put on, I’d sweat off two performing at night. No matter how much I ate, I was getting nowhere.

And desperate, running out of time. Well, there are always those guys hanging out around the gym who’ll tell you they’ve used steroids now and again, in the short term to bulk up. To improve athletic performance. No problem, they say, if you don’t use them too long. And at that point, I was ready to take their advice. Try anything once. Only, I don’t know what all was in that stuff, but it could not have been just steroids. After a couple of weeks, I was freakin’ wired.

Shannon would have killed me if he’d figured it out. Maybe he did figure it out, I don’t know. Tomo was starting to stare at me one night, which was beginning to make me paranoid, and I thought damn, I gotta quit all this fidgeting. But that fucking bus was so confining. _Seriously._ Like living in a tin can. Never noticed before how cramped it was in there. All I could think was, if I have to stay on this fucking bus until we get to L.A. I’ll be psycho.

Matt came over and put his hand on my shoulder. Which made me flinch. Don’t touch me, man. I can’t stand it. You’re crowding me. Get the fuck off.

"What’s up with you?" Shannon said, eyes narrowing, now that I’d attracted his attention. Nothing, I just need some space. Tomo looked at me like he was gonna cry. He hates fights in the family. Sometimes he’s such a fucking baby. He is the baby. He doesn’t like it when I say that, but it’s true. I didn’t want to slap him; really, I didn’t, but at that moment it was like my hand was itching, you know?

What was I thinking? I’ll never do that shit again.

*****

Right after that, I ran into Dr. Jack in Portugal. Ironic thing is, he’s one of those California physicians to the stars, and we had to go all the way to the MTV European Music Awards to find each other. I don’t know whose guest he was. Some shaky personality who couldn’t make a move without him, I suppose. He’s not quite a Dr. Feelgood, but rumor has it he can solve almost any problem you’ve got with his enlightened approach to pharmacopoeia. I got talking to him about the steroids at one of those after parties, and he shook his head.

"No, no," he said gravely, a bodhisattva of chemical self-actualization. "Steroids are much too hard on the heart. Nor will they give you that soft, inactive, couch potato look you are after. How much time do you have before you start to shoot?"

I told him.

All he said was, "Hm-m."

The next morning he came around to our hotel room and gave me two injections in the rump, and a bunch of pills. Shannon was munching down his room service breakfast, not looking too impressed with my new regimen.

"What is all this stuff?" I asked innocently.

"Gonadotrophins and some other hormones." Dr. Jack’s bedside manner was always his best endorsement, smooth as cream and very reassuring.

"Hormones?" Shannon burped around a mouthful of toast.

"Not steroids," I assured him quickly.

"Oh, no," added the good doctor. "We want to avoid all that."

We were on the plane back to NYC within hours. The jet lag was worse than awful when we finally got there. First thing the next morning, I got up and puked my guts out. Not gonna gain much weight this way, I’m thinking. But, there was really no time to be sick, because we had concert dates we were committed to. So we met up with Tomo and Matt right on schedule, and got back on the road.

*****

I never go trawling anymore like I sometimes used to. And I never did it much, even when I did. The bad part was, I used to let them give me things if they wanted to, even money, which is how Shannon and I ended up getting arrested… Well, ancient history.

After that happened, we sort of had this rule that whenever the urge struck us in the future, we’d just keep it at home. Which is how I’d gotten started with that sort of thing in the first place anyway; just the two of us, fooling around together when we were kids. Sex was always the best with Shannon. But, after a time, we finally stopped. I guess we outgrew it.

What I’m saying is there’s no shortage of libido in the Leto genes, and maybe too few scruples to go along with it, but keeping everything under a tight rein had never been a problem before. I chose the time and place, it didn’t choose me. That is, until I started taking Dr. Jack’s chemical cocktail. The sheer animal urgency that shit gave me crawled over my skin like fire ants. Let me tell you. I could have fucked Tomo till I was blind. He was starting to look very good to me. Even though I knew perfectly well when things like that go on between band members, it’s the kiss of death for the band. So, one night when we’d all gone out together, after one too many drinks, I found some nameless guy and ditched the others. This next part’s not going to be very glamorous.

There was a downstairs to this club, like so many others, that was half dungeon, half brothel. Little dark corners and stained couches where you didn’t want to think too hard about what had happened there last. Well, okay; if you were down in the basement, it was already a safe bet you weren’t thinking anyway.

We got right to business because you don’t descend into a hole like that for the purpose of making pleasant small talk. He was halfway into me when someone came along and interrupted us. That’s one of the dangers of those kinds of places. Local law enforcement is different everywhere, and I just got lucky it wasn’t another vice cop. I kept my face turned towards the back of the couch on the chance it might be someone who would recognize me, unlike my "date," whose concept of intellectually rewarding entertainment probably didn’t elevate itself any higher than the WWF. My reputation was safe with him, I was just another pretty ass.

There was some scuffling for half a second, then he was back at me. He wasted no time getting the results that he was looking for, barely making a sound except for some deep breathing, but he sure knew how to flip my switch. I grunted a warning as I came, then he came, and then he was gone. I’m serious. The dude disappeared like a vanishing act. Our unexpected interloper had probably spooked the living crap out of him. Drunk and disordered as I was, I still managed to grope my way back upstairs, alone.

Matt took one look at me and from his expression, for a moment, honestly, I thought he was about ready to just throw me over his shoulder. Instead, he tossed me into a cab. I asked if we weren’t going to wait for Shannon and Tomo, but he said they’d already gone back to the bus without us. When we got there ourselves, someone put me to bed. I don’t even remember who. I woke up to a blistering hangover, something I hadn’t done to myself in years. We’d been on the road for hours already, en route to the next Midwestern ghetto on our endless itinerary. I reminded myself this was the life I had always dreamed of, and tried to sip some bottled water without throwing up.

At that point, you might think I would quit taking the drugs, but I’d agreed to do the part and I was committed. Besides, right after that I did start putting on weight pretty quickly. Guess my body had simply needed some time to adjust. Suddenly, there was this little belly bulge where formerly I’d had a tight ripple of muscles. Shannon walked in on me coming out of the shower one day and I stuck my tummy out at him, along with my tongue. You should have seen his face. He didn’t laugh like I expected. Oddly, he looked more alarmed than amused.

We finished the tour in December, and over Christmas you’d have thought I’d never seen eggnog or a fruitcake before. Funny, I couldn’t remember it ever tasting so good. The other thing was, you can’t imagine how exhausted I felt. I know it had been a very long, relentless eight months on the road, but still. I’d be up for three or four hours in the morning, and fall asleep on the sofa in front of the television before noon. Shannon was watching me like a hawk, but being great about everything. When my face started to resemble a full moon, he told me he thought what I was doing for my art was admirable. He even brought me my pills, and said that I should sleep all I wanted, and eat whatever I liked. Within reason. No alcohol. Well, after that one awful night I could hardly disagree with him.

And he was fussy about caffeine, too. Sometimes, I thought he was a little over involved, you know? I’d expected him to stay in L.A. and take his own vacation while I was busy filming, but he came to New York to hang out and be in the apartment with me, and every now and then I would catch him staring at me all anxious and worried. It crossed my mind to wonder if he was concerned I might get myself into more trouble sexually if somebody wasn’t there to keep a watch over things. But, believe me, in that condition, there was absolutely no one I wanted seeing me naked. Meanwhile, I just kept getting bigger everyday, and Shannon kept bringing me my drugs, faithfully.

The film finally wrapped, and we’d been back on the road touring for about two months when one night, I passed out on stage. Someone tried to call for an ambulance, but I said, "no," and told everybody I'd just felt a little light-headed, so Shannon wouldn’t let them. Now, I don’t think Matt was in total agreement with him on that decision, because by then, almost anybody could tell something wasn’t right with me. Slim as the rest of me had gotten, there was still a residual situation around my mid-section that even the best cut of jacket couldn’t hide any longer. Seemed like, every time I had to haul myself out of a chair, Matt was right there at my elbow, and anytime I sat down in one, Tomo was bringing me something to raise my feet. That’s because my ankles tended to get swollen towards the end of the day.

And that wasn't the only problem. Right after I was done playing Chapman, I’d stopped taking Dr. Jack’s fat formula, but then almost immediately I'd started feeling like shit and getting sick again. Shannon suggested maybe going cold turkey was not the best thing, and I should try cutting back slowly to give my body a chance to adjust. So, I did that, and I did lose some weight, but my stomach still kept getting bigger. Bloating doesn’t even begin to describe it. I was really starting to worry about what was in those little capsules. I mean, what if I’d been giving myself liver cancer all along? I finally stopped taking them altogether. And I was still all swollen up, and sometimes my insides would just roll. Literally. Enough that you could actually watch it happening.

I stood in the bathroom with Shannon one day and said, "Look at this!" as the surface of my abdomen undulated like a subcutaneous quake was going on in my intestinal tract.

Like something out of the movie "Alien."

"That’s just wrong," I told him.

He put his hand over the spot where you could see my stomach twitching, and he got real quiet.

"Fuck," I said. "You might think I was pregnant." It was no longer the kind of joke you laughed at.

The next day, late in the afternoon, I knew I needed to see a doctor--a _real_ doctor--when I started to get pains. The date was May twenty-seventh. Of course, I’ll remember that day forever now.

We’d cycled our way back north again, through the heartland to the House of Blues in Cleveland. It’s on Euclid Avenue, which is damn convenient since so is the Cleveland Clinic, and while we were rehearsing things began to get pretty bad. I said I was afraid we were going to have to cancel, and that’s when Matt knew just how bad it really was. Because I’ll never cancel a show. I’ve hung on him, bled on him, and puked on him getting through a set, but I never talk about canceling.

I can’t remember now where my brother had gone off to, but it was Matt who bundled me up and told Tomo to go find Shannon, and the next thing I knew we were in a cab headed off across town.

Let me tell you what an emergency room waiting area is like in a major city. It’s like an airport terminal, I kid you not. If you are an otherwise healthy looking young adult male, unless you remember to say the magic words "chest pain," you may be there until you’re old enough for Medicare. I must not have looked too healthy, and I was kind of gasping for breath a little by this time, as well. They took me right in.

They wouldn’t let Matt come with me very far, though, in spite of the fact that he had a grip on me like iron and I could barely walk on my own. Basically, they had to pry us apart from one another. An ER doctor ordered a CT scan the minute he laid eyes on me, and while I was going through that, Shannon showed up. I’d been stripped, gowned, poked with an IV and carted off to the seventh floor when we finally caught up with each other. There I was, in a nearly empty pre-surgical ward, gripping my twisting gut and saying hello to a tiny, unflappable, middle-aged Korean woman who was going to be my physician. Shannon stood beside my bed looking pale as the porcelain god, and I wondered if maybe this time he was the one who was going to throw up.

"They’re taking you to surgery." His pallor was progressing from pasty to ashen. He seemed to be going into shock.

"Why? What is it?"

"Ec-topic-k," my little doctor said to me very distinctly. "Ec-topic preg-a-nancy," she repeated in her inflectionless accent. Like it was nothing unusual. All in a day’s work. Do they train you to keep your cool like that in medical school? I bet they do. Don’t add to the patient’s anxiety. Then again, maybe she’d seen worse.

In all honesty, I don’t think there was a single day for the last two months that I didn’t actually know what was happening with me. It must have required some formidable effort on the part of my subconscious to suppress all the facts from my waking thoughts, to simply keep going. So, it wasn’t so much of a shock as a relief to finally hear someone say it.

Shannon’s hands were shaking on the bedrail, worse even than the times he’s tried to quit smoking, but strangely enough he didn't seem very surprised either. He lowered his head and peered at me from under those neat, arched brows of his. An indecipherable message passed between us eye to eye, soul to soul. Not one word was spoken, though, not in front of strangers. I wished I'd known exactly what he was trying to tell me. Other than he was there for me, obviously, and like everything else in this life we were in it together.

"So what are we waiting for?" I asked.

"There’s another surgeon scrubbing. Gastrointestinal. Just in case," Shannon mumbled. ‘Cause, not having the benefit of proper girl parts, there was a chance things were pretty tangled up in there.

Great. So it was incredible _and_ serious.

Everything went okay, though. I have a bikini incision, which means I can still show almost all the skin I dare, shakin’ my bonbons. The GI guy had warned me he couldn’t promise I wouldn’t wake up to a trail of staples running across my belly like something resembling a railway map, in case he needed more room to maneuver. I’d pictured myself being filleted like a fish. I just begged him not to cut any ties to things I might want to use in the future. That what he was seeing here today was not the whole story. But everything went fine. No severe bleeding. They pulled a five and a half pound baby girl out of me, who squalled like an angry bear cub. Little small, but no problem with her lungs.

They’ve kept me here for five days now, tucked away in a private room on an obscure surgical wing. And I take it a five day inpatient stay must be some kind of hospital record for delivering a baby in these days of managed medical care. Delivery. Don’t you love that word? I tell you what, this package did not get here by Federal Express. I wonder what the fuck they’re going to say to the insurance company.

My doctor comes around with my hospital chart, making check marks and shrugging to herself, saying things like "no fundus," putting huge lines through the forms. I can’t tell you how many endless questions I’ve been asked about my medical history. Worst interviews I’ve ever given in my life. Then, she squeezes my chest. It’s sore, but guess what? Nothin’s going on there. Nothing whatsoever, so thank god for Similac. While I may have been a fair incubator, it seems I do not have what it takes to be an adequate mother. And I’ve been thinking about that.

In fact, when the nurse who checks my incision came around this morning, she was amazed at how much my abs have shrunk already, and how fast things are going back to normal.

"Wow. What’s your secret?" she inquired curiously.

"I’m a guy."

Which all adds up to my next dilemma.

They won’t let me take her home with me until I give them a name for the birth certificate. And since I’m not sure I’m taking her home with me, I’ve been stalling. I mean, think about it. What kind of life would that be? For any of us?

When I mention this to Shannon he gets blue around the lips again. He’s been doing a lot of that lately. Jesus, Shannon, breathe. I’m sitting on the side of the bed holding her in my arms, and he’s in the chair right across from me. He’s always had such a hard time even looking at her, I thought he’d be relieved. Once out of sight, finally out of mind. But now, he’s staring at her like his eyes can't take in enough of her. The way a starving man looks at a crust of bread.

"You’d do that?" he says in a choked whisper. "You’d just give her up?"

"Well, what else can I do? Take her with us? On the road?"

He’s silent for a long time. "She has your eyes."

She has midnight blue eyes, but, "All babies have blue eyes," I tell him.

"Don’t do it, Jared." He called me Jared. Not that he never calls me Jared, but usually, out of long-standing habit, he’s calling me other things. So, when he says "Jared," it always gets my attention. His voice was barely more than the breath it took to say it. I found myself biting back my objection. He looked so… it stopped me dead in my thoughts. One nearly unbearable, practically heart-stopping thought, to be precise. And for a moment, I don’t think either one of us was breathing.

"Well, here then," I clear my throat and thrust her at him unceremoniously, dropping her into his arms. "You’d better get used to it."

He looks like he’s afraid she might break, or maybe he will. I don’t know which.

*****

Tomo and Matt come creeping around to visit me a little after that. Together, like a pair of kids walking into a haunted house. How to say this; that first meeting does not go so well. Awkward would be an incredible understatement, but we work through the preliminaries and the introductions with mutual conviction. Later, it’s funny watching Tomo bring his skittish determination to bear on the problem of feeding and burping an infant. Things get easier as we go along.

Now, he’s the first one on his feet whenever she wails.

Tonight, she’s lying in her high-sided basket beside me, and the bus is rocking us both to sleep. Oh, I forgot to tell you what I named her. Unity. Because in everything and every one of us, there is a tiny seed, a spark, of what is essentially the opposite. War and peace, male and female, dark and light. I suppose the force of change from this experience could have driven the band apart, I’m asking for so much from each of them to make this work. Instead, it seems to have brought us even closer together. The bond between the four of us is tighter now than it ever was before.

I know how hard the three of them work together every day to encourage my art. To give me enough rope, but not so much that I hang myself, and to protect me from my occasionally misguided impulses. Like that one awful, brainless night when I was so completely out of control. They haven’t gotten around to telling me yet what all they did for me then, the whole story, but they will someday. In the meantime, the living evidence of their commitment is right here sleeping peacefully, dreaming the dreams of the innocent, warm and safe under my hand.

\--end--


End file.
